Round and round

There are girls Owen's age that try desperately to get his attention. An almost two year-old classmate of his, who clearly adores him, told him last week, "Owen, I think you are beautiful." But he doesn't really notice them. It's kind of sad to watch.

I just tell the parents of these poor girls, "It's not her fault she doesn't have wheels." Because if there were a girl with wheels, he would be smitten. Owen loves wheels. He has loved pushing things with wheels since before he could walk. One of his first "words" was "ra ra ra" for bus - as in, "the wheels on the bus go ra ra ra." For a while he would ride in his stroller with his head stuck out the side so he could watch the wheels go round.

Now that it's spring, Owen pushes his stroller home from daycare almost every day. This is not as straightforward as it might sound. For one, it's very hard for him to see where he's going. He has to stick his head around the side to do that, but that makes it hard to push it straight. So sometimes he just opts to push it blindly. This causes great amusement for people walking towards us. If he can't see them, they can't see him. About 50% of them laugh and remark that they thought the stroller was pushing itself.

The daycare is due East of our apartment - straight into the low sun in the morning and evening. Owen does not like direct sunlight. The bloglet regulars among you might note that his sunglass addiction could come in handy for this problem, and it does to some extent. He has now gotten the hang of wearing them right side up and leaving them on for a minute or two at a time. But then he has to stop to take them on and off a few times. You can watch him stop and think about how he's going to do that and push the stroller at the same time. His hands go back and forth from the glasses to the stroller. He tries one hand on each, then realizes he needs both hands to push the stroller. He puts the glasses on the ground, then pushes the stroller one step, and realizes that they're not coming with him. He picks them back up, then realizes that he doesn't have any hands left for the stroller. He repeats this several times and then eventually he gives up, puts them back on and walks some more.


Until the terrain under his feet changes from sidewalk to black top to red bricks, or sewer grating. Then he has to stop and announce the name of the new terrain. (No, he doesn't say sewer grating. He either names the shape of it, or calls out the letters on it.) Then he'll walk for a while, until we get to a bench, where he'll stop and yell, "Owen sit on the bench!" and climb up onto the bench to sit for a moment. And then, from time to time, if he sees a tree, he has to stop and hug it. I'm not kidding. He hugs trees.

He wears his sunglasses at night

Owen absolutely loves sunglasses. He loves folding them and unfolding them, putting them on his face, under his chin, on his head. He loves telling you when you're wearing them (and then grabbing them off your face and playing with them himself). This has been going on for as long as I can remember - at least since last summer. It has been a challenge for him to learn to be gentle with sunglasses. He has destroyed several pairs of mine and of his own. It is heartbreaking to hear him cry "Mommy fix the broken glasses!"


At school they try really hard to not have any items that "belong" to one child or another, but they've basically made an exception for Owen and a particularly fetching pair of purple sunglasses with white dots. If the other children take them, everyone gets very tense until they hand them back over to Owen. Fortunately his friends seem to understand the importance of the purple glasses in Owen's life. All weekend he asks for the purple glasses and we talk about how he'll get to have them again when he goes back to school on Monday.

With spring and summer on the way (someday), I thought that perhaps I'd like to wear sunglasses again sometime soon, and for that to happen, Owen would have to become attached to a pair of his own. So I went online and picked out four pairs for him. He immediately fell in love with a green pair with colorful dots. Last night I let him go to sleep with them on (the things you never think you'll do before you have a 2-year old). Then, rather predictably, in the middle of the night I woke to him screaming at the top of his lungs "GREEN GLASSES! GREEN GLASSES!" because they had fallen on the floor. I didn't go in - I couldn't justify giving in to a 3 am cry for sunglasses, of all things - but I wanted to.

Portrait of a two-year old, Part II

(We're still here, we're just insanely busy - taking turns traveling and interviewing, trying to get Owen to stop throwing his food. Good thing he's so cute!)

Portrait of a two-year old

WMOM - all requests, all the time

Owen has always loved to be sung to. Now he requests the songs he wants to hear by name. And he does it all. the. time. It is useful at night when I'm putting him to sleep. Instead of trying a dozen songs only to have him yell "no song!", now he just says "Sing Uff Magic Ragon song," or "Sing Hit the Road - Jack." Tonight he said "How about Jingle Bells?" and we sang it about a hundred times. It's not so much fun, after I've left the room, when he starts yelling "Moooommmyyyyyyy! Sing! Alleluiaaaaa!" (which is Owenspeak for "Michael row the boat ashore.") It is lots of fun in the morning, when he is generally in a good mood. This morning he asked me to "Sing E I E I O song!" So I sang Old MacDonald and let him fill in the animals. To my great surprise, it turns out that Old MacDonald has a farm filled with chickens, cows, pigs, and triangles!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Owen!

Bravery

Owen has been going to the "ear doctor" ever since his first ear infection when he was just 4 months old. Fortunately he doesn't get ear infections too often, but they still want to monitor him, since even between infections his ears don't clear properly. What this means is that every few months we go to 2 appointments, one with an audiologist and one with an ENT. And Owen hates it. He typically screams at the top of his lungs the entire time, from the moment we walk in the room (he recognizes it right away). He thrashes and refuses to stay still, and I have to hold him as tight as I can so the doctors can do everything they need to without puncturing his eardrums. It is extraordinarily exhausting, both physically and emotionally.

He had his most recent appointments on Monday. I tried to prepare him in advance by telling him we were going to see the doctor, and that the doctor was going to want to check his ears. When we got there this time, he took one look at the doctor and said "no doctor! no ears!" and clung to me and was about to cry. And then the most amazing thing happened. I held him and explained again that the doctor just wanted to put the telephone in his ear and see what Owen heard. And I lied a little bit, and said that maybe his grandparents would be on the phone. And then I watched him be so brave. He didn't protest. He didn't cry. He leaned in against me, his eyes big and his lips quivering, and sat quietly through multiple tests. By the end he even cooperated by pointing to various body parts when the doctor asked him to in quieter and quieter voices. Then later in the afternoon, we went back to the ENT, and he was scared again, and he was brave again. The whole experience was remarkable, not just for his cooperation, but for how clear it was that he was cooperating despite his obvious fear and uneasiness. He has self-control. He can be brave. He is growing up.

Oh, and his ears? Not great, but good enough for now. We'll go back in May for the next round of tests.

The balancing act

Raised by a working mother myself, I know I’m not doing anything new in raising Owen while continuing my career. Until recently, I hadn’t even stopped to give it much thought. I had been warned that in trying to do it all, I might wind up feeling like both a bad scientist and a bad mother. But I’ve actually been quite satisfied, and it hasn’t been as hard as I feared. As I tell anyone who will listen, the two key things that make it doable are a fantastically supportive husband who is a great father, and convenient, high quality daycare. Add to the mix that Owen is a great sleeper (except for his recent tendency to forego naps) and that Harvard has some great new programs for working scientist moms (thank you, Larry Summers), and I really can’t complain.

But let’s be clear: it’s still a struggle. That convenient, high quality daycare is expensive, and we can’t actually afford it. Its hours are strict, so there’s no staying an extra 10 minutes in lab to finish an experiment. We have a few hours a day of time at home when Owen is asleep and we’re not, and those are filled quickly with work we weren’t able to finish during the day, not to mention household chores. And there is almost no time for errands. Even grocery shopping needs to be planned for – I can’t go on my own with Owen while Mike’s in the lab because there’s no way to transport the groceries from the car to the apartment without Owen running into the street. We used to love to watch movies, but we don’t get to go out to movies at all anymore, and we have been so busy that we even canceled our DVD subscription service for lack of use – and didn’t even miss it. I used to love to read books, but now I use my commute for catching up on email, and I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

So, what’s so hard about it? Most of the time, as I’ve said before, being a working mom provides me with a sense of balance. But it is a delicate balance. Adding just one thing, like a snowstorm, or traveling, or one or more of us getting sick, can throw us off kilter for weeks. And trying to do what we’ve been doing lately – keeping our lab work moving forward while we apply for faculty positions in our spare time – is asking for trouble. The winter has been filled with snowstorms, illnesses, and extra work that seem to be conspiring against us. Most recently, Owen has been suffering a not-very-serious (thank goodness) but hard-to-shake stomach bug that kept him home from daycare almost all of last week. It sent us into crisis mode, because we both had important experiments to do, not to mention preparations for upcoming interviews. Thankfully Owen’s beloved Nana came and saved the day – caring for him so we could get some work done.

Then this morning, poor Nana came down with the bug. And Mike had to work all day. So my long list of things to do got put on hold (yet again). I never even had a chance to get out of my pajamas. But lucky me – I got to spend the entire day with Owen. We read books (“more Sam book!”), made artwork with crayons and stickers (“Mommy help please!”), rolled around on pillows and blankets on the floor (uncontrollable laughter), watched youtube videos (“more cows!” “more dinosaurs!” “more Barack Obama!”), and sang lots of songs (“more happy know it!”). At dinner, Owen ate two big bowls of applesauce all by himself with a spoon, for the first time –thanks to Nana’s teaching. And then I put him to bed, like I do almost every night, rocking him and singing to him and feeling the weight of his head and the wet warmth of his drool on my left shoulder. And that's what we working parents mean when we say "it's all worth it."

Maybe this time it will open?

Owen has been working on a project lately. A little over a week ago, he took a set of keys and started poking it in the grating covering the hot water pipes in our hallway. He has since spent hours and hours testing every key on both of our key rings in just about every "keyhole" on it. When we bring him home from school, he starts saying "Owen want keys!" before we even get in the door. He doesn't even stop to take off his coat before he picks up where he left off. His patience is amazing. He just keeps trying and trying, and has yet to be put off by his lack of meaningful progress. Occasionally he'll say, "help please" or "open it," but only in a hopeful tone - never frustrated. I'm not sure whether he just enjoys doing it, or if he thinks there's a huge reward at the end, but either way, his diligence serves as a noble example of persistence in the face of a challenge!

Happy 2009!

Hope you're celebrating New Year's Eve in style!